fast and curious

November 2016

Here in the US, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. It's a holiday still blissfully untouched by obligatory gifts or greeting cards, but is focused almost exclusively around family and food. The jury's out on which gets more love, but some of the best loved foods are pies (undoubtedly more than turkey)!

Can you show your love of pies by making a word ladder from LOVE to PIES?

Quick refresher: a word ladder is a series of words, starting from one word and ending with another, where each subsequent word is a one-letter change from the previous word (without rearranging the letters). And, of course, each step is a valid English word. For instance, you can change CAT to DOG like this:
CAT => COT => DOT => DOG.

Congratulations to the Chicago Cubs! In honor of their dramatic and historic victory, here's a baseball brain teaser to keep the baseball juices flowing (ummm, that's brain juices, not steroid juices):

This year, Ace Alonzo, Blazin' Boone, and Cruisin' Callahan played for the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, and Boston Red Sox in some combination. Can you figure out which teams they each played for?

Here are some things that happened this season:

Cruisin' Callahan once struck out Blazin' Boone on three pitches.

Ace Alonzo never wanted to be a Lovable Loser so never played for them.

Cruisin' Callahan played for a team from the capital city of its state.

Blazin' Boone never had any games at Progressive Field.

Cruisin' Callahan had a special clause in his contract that let him only play home games, which means he got to sleep in his tree house fort in his childhood oak tree every night of the whole season.

Ace Alonzo had spring training at Goodyear Ballpark.

Cruisin' Callahan was covering first base when he got an out by catching a throw from Ace Alonzo.

Blazin' Boone had one favorite baseball cap that he wore for every game.

So, what do you think? Which teams did Alonzo, Boone, and Callahan play for?

As Halloween approaches, houses are decorated, parties are planned, and many children's minds wander toward their costumes and the haul of candy they're going to collect. Parents' minds typically wander toward the haul of candy they're going to sneak after their children fall into their sugary slumber.

One past Halloween, sisters Cindy and Lisa went trick-or-treating. Cindy was a Viking and Lisa was a Viking cat, which we can only assume involved wearing cat whiskers and a horned helmet. Now Cindy did very well this Halloween, getting more than 100 pieces of candy but less than her all-time record of 200 pieces. Lisa, on the other hand, apparently confused a lot of the homeowners giving out candy, and ended up with just one 3 Musketeers Fun-size bar (not even a full-size one).

Cindy, trying to console her devastated sister, said: "It's not so bad, Lisa! If you take the number of pieces of candy I got, reverse the digits, then add it to the original number, you get the number of calories in your trick-or-treat bag. Well, you would if you had 7 more 3 Musketeers bars."